


Ephemera

by nauticalGriot



Series: Corrumpo [2]
Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7162520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nauticalGriot/pseuds/nauticalGriot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and you NEVER REALLY KEPT TRACK OF YOUR AGE but you figure you're somewhere around FIFTY-EIGHT SWEEPS. You TYPE LIKE THIS, BECAUSE YOU THINK IT'S LESS WELCOMING AND YOU DON'T NEED ANYONE'S UNCLEANED CARTILAGE NUB IN YOUR BUSINESS. You spend most of your time BARELY EXISTING and HANGING OUT WITH YOUR LUSUS because being in your situation hasn't afforded you many chances to get out. You don't have an official title yet but, to be honest, you DON'T REALLY GIVE A SHIT ABOUT TITLES ANYMORE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ephemera

Days like these are the worst, you think.

You could live with having to lock yourself inside so the sun doesn't scorch your skin and cook you like a cluckbeast's offspring, but the _noise_ always makes you want to stick cotton in your ears. Claws digging into stone, the door creaking from an undead being trying to see if anyone is inside, the occasional beast or lusus or troll screaming, and sometimes you swear you can still hear the (supposedly) extinct giant serpents moving through the sand under your hive. Even after so many sweeps of living out in the middle of the desert, it isn't something you find yourself getting used to.

To his credit, your lusus tries to distract you on the days with busier undead traffic. Usually he shoves a book towards you or a game (one you'll have to play by yourself, as his meaty claws just tend to break them) or some sort of eveningmeal. More often than not, the day ends with you in your block trying to find some comfort in your husktop. You spend a lot of time trying to find more information about mutations - acceptable and cull worthy - and trying to keep up on what's happening out in the Real World while you're practically chained to your hive. It's an uncomfortable way to spend the days and nights when you know most trolls can sleep in their coons and wander the night without restriction.

Today is no different from any other and, as usual, you find yourself stuffed in your respiteblock with your husktop cradled on your walking stubs. Hesitating, you let your claws click on the smooth plastic surface under your phalanges and take a breath in through your nose. Checking in on the rest of Alternia is always a little draining and leaves you feeling unsurprisingly disconnected.

In the headlines today is the death of the previous Empress. Again. The same stories have been circulating for weeks, even with the new Empress crowned and working herself into her position. They question whether she was really _killed_ or if she's just _gone_ seeing as the only real evidence to support her death is some hair and a few fingers. That's what the rumors say at least, but you aren't sure it matters if someone else has already been crowned anyway. Why would she just leave, anyway, if she could have killed the heiress? Why would anyone lie about culling the Empress when the penalty for something like that is (probably) death? It doesn't make a lot of sense to you and you've seen a lot of movies about things like this. You're starting to suspect that maybe the news is about as useful as the fecal matter in your waste pot. It doesn't take long for you to get bored with clicking through the same filtered stories over and over, and soon enough your husktop is abandoned on the floor and you're wandering aimlessly through your hive.

Somewhere downstairs, your lusus starts letting out a series of steady clicks. Maybe there's another lusus outside and he's warning them off? Maybe he's just bored. You don't know, he's probably a little shithive maggots.

Temporarily ignoring the custodian downstairs, you wander into the ablution block. The mirrors are dusty, you absently tuck away the idea of cleaning them for later, and there's still a collection of your belongings left on the counter top. You rather unceremoniously dump everything into a drawer so you can get to the sink, and then proceed to turn on the water. It sputters for a few moments - when was the last time you used it? you probably need to shower, do you smell? - but recovers quickly enough and you run the liquid over your hands before splashing some onto your face and turning it off again. Wiping your hands on your pants, you squint at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes are so red that you could never pass for maroon without goggles, and the bags under your eyes attest to your lack of sleep. Your hair has grown out, could probably use a trim, and your skin looks dull but you choose to blame it on the dust on the glass, maybe it's making you look worse for wear.

Looking at yourself in the mirror for too long is never an incredibly pleasant experience, though, so you turn to the ablution trap on your right. To shower or not to shower? It's an easy question to answer. You curl your lip and drag your feet on the floor on your way back down the stairs to the living block. Your lusus is still just sitting there, clicking and staring at nothing. Sighing more to yourself than him, you reach out and pat his hard white shell. It does nothing to pacify him, of course, and his clicks just steadily grow louder.

Something outside hits your door and you draw one sickle. After a couple moments the creature outside moves on and you turn to your lusus. He's staring at you, shifting around as if he has too much energy to stay still. You sigh again and take a couple steps back, resigning yourself to the fact that you'll have to strife with him to calm him down again.

It takes a good ten minutes of kicking and fussing but eventually he calms his clicks to a hum and sits back towards the nutrition block to go back to steadily staring at you. Already knowing what he wants, you grumble to yourself a little and go to get your fatass lusus some chilled roe cubes. You can't believe he enjoys these frozen blocks of fish as much as he does, it blows your thinkpan that such a large creature would rather eat sixteen plates of roe cubes as opposed to just eating a whole seadweller or something. You pull one plate out of the freezer and before you can even turn around he's shoving his face into the plate and, yeah, there they go all over the floor. Not that he cares, plucking them up with an absurd amount of accuracy and shoving them into his oversized maw.

You look at him and then back at the incredibly old questionably accurate drawing of him you put on the cooling unit when you were around five. You wonder, briefly, if he will outlive you with your presumably short lifespan.

  
  


The answer to your question comes roughly a week later.

There's an unbelievable kind of silence following death. It's as if everything in the world takes a few moments to mourn for him, the _stupid_ oversized crab that wandered just a little too close to the ruins and found himself crushed. There are rocks still partially covering him, you use your shaking prongs to drag most of them off but you know it's a lost cause before you even uncover him. He's so still that it's unnerving.

You vomit three times in the next ten minutes, sending anything you've consumed in the past perigree out of your facegash like a volcano of beige liquid. Even after you've emptied your stomach, you find yourself staring at him in a weird kind of disbelief. His shell held up surprisingly well, you think, despite the many blemishes he sports now. But there's blood coming from one of his optical orbs and the back of his skull, pooling around him and making the sand thick like mud.

For a very long time, you just sit in the sand and try to figure out what to do with his body. He's too large for you to drag hive or bury or anything like that, and you know the natural cycle but... It seems so cold to just leave him there to be eaten by another lusus or some strange troll living in the ruins. Not that you have much of a choice in the long run, but you think it's probably the thought that counts. So you decide to leave him there, dragging yourself to your feet and maneuvering around the rocks to look around you.

To your left is hive, sand, daywalkers, everything you've ever seen in the near sixty sweeps of your failed existence. The ruins are behind you and extending far to your right, hiding who knows what. If everything you've learned through books and your husktop is true, there should actually be trees and civilization somewhere past all the crumbling stone. Of course, you've never gone that far. You've never seen past the ruins. 

It hits you like a brick to the face that the only thing you had to go hive to is gone.

So you don't go hive.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you have a lot to catch up on.


End file.
